Some food photos

  Got these the other day, and very nice the food was too!

Mudbanks and other things, some black and white pics

  Went for a walk today after shopping, only took the old camera and walk around lens so limited kit. Got these.

Camera bag WAY too heavy!

 

 No, it's no good pretending, my camera bag is silly heavy!   I've tried over the years taking stuff out but then miss it and it creeps back in.  Added to faster lens with better heavier glass and it's now daft.

 I was getting it ready for a weekend shoot, that mean adding a good few sets of flash batteries, that as well as some heavy lens, two bodies and spare camera battries makes matters worse.  I went to put it away today after sorting and it nearly pulled me over backwards.

 Now the killer is I still haven't got all the battries in yet, theres another few sets to go.  

 I'm really stuck between a rock and a hard place.  You see I might need and will probably use most of the kits in the bag during the long day.  So I can't just "go light" on the other hand I dont fancy humping that weight about all day either.

 I'm going to have to look at different kit I think.

Bonkers dog and my new cooker

 This is the new guard dog... well sort of. Trouble is like most boxers he's bonkers.  When I say bonkers I mean bonkers.  Lets put it this way if he was a Viking he'd have the helmet with the horns on the inside.  The lights are on but the lift doesn't go to all the floors.  he's a snadwich, a few plastic plates and a thermos short of a picnic.  Still he is cute.

 My new cookers come, so thats a plus and as I speak the engineer is rebuilding my boiler... I hope.

Flight safety and well done Airbus.

 Your nice shiny Malaysia airlines Airbus A 330 takes off from Brisbane and climbs to 11.000 feet, you and 228 other people enjoy the comfort and view.  What none of you know is the crew have no airspeed indications, and aircraft need to keep above a certain speed to avoid dropping like a brick.

 To make matters worse is they took off like this, it didn't happen in mid air, they actually took off with no airspeed showing .

 The reason is very simple, Brisbane has a wasp problem, no not stinging people (well yes they probably do) but the mud wasp likes to nest in tubes and small holes, the planes pitot tubes for example, this is a heated (in flight) tube sticking out the front of the plane, linked to a sort of barometer, the plane works out the speed from the difference between the air coming in the tube and the static air pressure outside (from a hole somewhere else) obviously if the tube is blocked the system fails to work properly.

 If Mr wasp bungs up the hole you have no speed or the wrong speed.  This has caused fatal crashes in the past, as has icing of the tube if the crew forget to turn the heating on.  Airports have a cure for wasps ect, a sock like cover with a big red tassle on it is put over the tube to keep stuff out... like wasps.  The trick here is to take the sock off before you take off, it's a bitch to reach after!

 So at Brisbane the sock was fitted and left on.  Before takeoff the captain, engineer and dispatch coordinator all do a walk around to look for things just like this, none of them noticed the sock and tassle designed to be easy to see and obvious.  

Before takeoff the the aircraft’s primary instrument displays showed red speed flags in place of airspeed indications  due to the lack of data, now as the crew use the airspeed dial as part of takeoff, theres things called V1 and V2 speed which are important they couldn't have missed the red flags, they still didn't abort the takeoff but went anyway.

 Luckly for the 229 people onboard Mr Airbus had thought of things like this happening (or he'd met the crew before) Either way this particular aircraft was fitted with a system called BUSS, back up speed scale, this helps to keep the aircraft in a safe speed range in the event of the primary system failing.  They were lucky, the next plane doing the same might not have this system!

 The flight landed safely back at Brisbane.   I think it's safe to say this captain will check properly next time he takes off....  I hope..... 

Last day no heating?

 I'm told the engineer is coming today (thurs) to finish my boiler, it's also the day my new cookers supposed to come so fingers crossed.

I'm supposed to be out this evening seeing some old mates, not sure if thats going to happen yet as I need to get the above sorted first, plus I need to get some cash out the bank... beer vouchers if you know what I mean.

the Apprentice tv series

 I've watched the Apprentice since the first series way back in the mists of time. This series seems different though.

 For one thing the classic "buying/selling" episode was missing, one of Lord Sugars favorites.  Secondly the selection of canditates seems odd, not the normal bunch, this lot are more or less unemployable.

 So far as well as the normal blunders these so called business men and women couldn't spell the word Arctic, then went on to make a baby food with the word DIE as part of the label, I mean come on!  How bloody dumb do you have to be to do that?

 I can kind of understand the arctic mistke, under pressure and rushing it's an easy one, but who makes food with the word DIE on the label?  Even a child would pick up on that.

 Then we come to who is going to win.  We're down to a women only final (hardly a supprise with the BBC running the program) but the odd part is the best canditates seem to have all been sacked. Ok to be fair it was a tough choice for Lord Sugar with a bunch of wasters like this but honestly these are not the best you have left.  None of these would get a job with me.

 So who is going to win, well I do have a bit of an idea, but lets watch and see.  My suspicion is this will be the last series anyway, it's lost it's fire, and frankly they need a better group of canditates to start with.  Personally I wouldn't trust this lot to blow up my airbed... and I don't even have one....